Mission to Athens

On Tuesday we flew to the UK for the first time ever! Seeing our friends from DTS, the Fishers, was a delightful breath of fresh air! Its been over 2 years since we finished our mission school together! We had a few hours of a layover in London and had a blast catching up with them and their daughter, Abi!

Leaving London we had a night flight into Athens, it took about an hour and a half before lift off for some issue they had with a cabin door not closing properly. Then finally after that 3.5 hour flight, we landed safely. Its 4:00am and find that there are no trains running not just because it was too early, they arent running all week! So, we must take 2 taxis to get to our apartment. We arrived to a very narrow, dark alley looking street with all our bags and manage to get in to find a small place on the 4^th floor that I arranged with AirBnB.com a month ago. I had the area scouted out, knew that it was more congested being closer to the city center. It was exactly what we wanted, to be with the people. Its cozy and has many small businesses around I found when searching for coffee. We like to frequent a place (grocer, coffee shop, burger house, etc.) that God shows us and connect deeper as He leads us. Being in the city, everywhere we go, we walk. No big deal! Because we brought our stroller for Banner! And with the big kids getting bigger, that part is getting easier!

Anyway, back to the apartment when we arrived...All the beds were dirty, we were pretty disgusted quite honestly. Everything else was clean. But we had to strip the sheets from all the beds, find clean linens and remake the beds. We were not happy and had pretty grumpy attitudes if I'm totally honest. Our expectations were a little high I suppose, and we were just total zombies from the 2 days of flights, travel and hardly any sleep and needed some shuteye, laying flat!

So now at 6:30 am we get settled down in bed, and what was only going to be a bit of sleep turned into all day sleep! I woke up at 2:15 in the afternoon! Welcome to jet lag! It took the kids a few hours to come to complete coherency, get ready and get out the door later to grab some food and then groceries. Its probably 7pm when we walk through the plaza that we didnt realize we were in at first, we thought we were starving! Then we find our favorite burger and gyro place, Goody's. After a good fill of yummy food,  And its dark by now...we step outside of Goody's take a few looks around to see where we can possibly find a store to grab some bread, cereal, milk, lunch items, etc...and just as I spot one and we head that way, we start to notice the people in the plaza/square...under the street lights, throughout the square, on the sidewalks and at every bench sat people...kids were running around kicking a ball, a woman nursing a baby sitting on the ground off to the side against a wall with 2 other small children playing around her, and by this time I'm about in tears... We get our groceries and head back a half mile or so away to our cozy little apartment for the night, where we know we will be able to feed our children when they are hungry, snuggle them in a warm and clean bed for every night while we get to stay here in Athens. Yet..so many dont have that comfort. And my complaints about dirty sheets seem so very petty. A while back, we were told about how the refugees were kicked out of the camps around the city, but did not know exactly where they were living now... its just a little sobering to see it with your own eyes...

We've been settling in to our place here and trying to shake our jet-lagged headaches, but....our hearts are broken tonight...seeing so many people without homes is wrecking us. Without a home and without hope is a sorry place to be. But we know God has had a plan in this move, this huge Exit from the Arab nations where they've fled from...maybe making it easier for them to be reached, and their hearts more ready for the gospel Truth.

Keep us in prayer, we want to be led by God to the right people to reach. We can't reach them all, please pray...We only have 10 weeks here and we want every day to count.